The refreshingly plainspoken Teddypig has called out All Romance eBooks for THIS smarmy twist on the definition of romance.W-T-F? I must lead a more sheltered life than I realized, because I had no idea ARe is now in the porn business. (God, those titles alone make my stomach clench!) The fact their YA/Juvenile category also contains this crap is especially bothersome.

On a brighter book-related note, SFWA has announced its 2012 Nebula Award Nominees. The Nebula is a prestigious award that carries a lot of weight within the publishing industry and among readers of science fiction and fantasy. Does the awards committee shun books with GLBTQ content? I can't say for sure, but I doubt it. *ahem*

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Congrats to those who started Embrace the Rainbow. Hope it is successful. I must get the link hooked up to my button on the blog.

There is a thread on GR m/m about the ARe books. It's called "flooding the market" http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/788335-flooding-the-market but it specifically talks about the proliferation of tackily titled porn mixed in with the other books. (I can't see TP's post but I have seen some of the covers passed around - the excerpts are painful and sound like a 6th grader wrote them.) I have to say I rarely shop at ARe anymore unless I go looking for a specific book. I know what I want and I'll sometimes shop there because I get a free book every 10. But you can no longer just "browse" new items because for what I'm looking for, maybe 2-3 books per page of 10 are legitimate books, not cut and pastes from free erotica sites with lurid titles. And they are freaking expensive. Who is paying $2.99 for a 3000 word story? Do they not realize they can get that same quality (probably better) for free at places like Literotica?

It's kind of sad, there are some really good self-published books out there but they get caught up in the crap.

I understand at ARe, you need to have at least 10 titles to list, but really, how much would it take to hammer out 10 poorly written and unedited sex scenes. I suppose they don't have the staff to actually read all the submissions and determine whether they are worthy, but it is annoying when people jumping on the gravy train kind of screw it up for other people who are putting out legit works that are actually worth money. Although I suppose, my opinion of "legit" works might not jive with someone else's and those damn things seem to be selling, for now.

It's funny how issues pick up steam. I noticed there was some action on the m/m thread and someone named Sara (I don't know her but she publishes or works for a publisher) said ARe sent out an e-mail saying the following ... more or less.

"The gist of it is they will be changing the site over the next couple of weeks. Books will either be in an "erotica" or "erotic romance" category. Every book in that section will have to be manually recategorized to go into the new system. Those publishers who don't change their books manually (or indicate to the person in charge of the changes that they only pub erotica or erotic romance and their entire catalog can be moved en masse) will find their books unavailable after the changes are made."

So publishers are going to have to pick which category and those who just slap their stuff up there and run away waiting for the checks may find their books removed from the list. So hopefully this will get things sorted out somewhat. One can hope.

As for price of those small books, apparently at ARe you get 70% commission on books priced $2.99 or over vs ... 50%? Anyway, it's the reason they all jack the price. You can apparently not sell the book for less elsewhere so it can't be $1.99 on Smashwords and $2.99 on Are. So complicated.